- Uganda: Lawmakers Pass Scaled-Back Sovereignty Law After Central Bank Warning
Source: US News & World Report
“Uganda’s parliament passed legislation to curb alleged foreign influence after scaling back proposed restrictions on funding from abroad that the central bank governor said risked ‘economic disaster.’ The proposal, entitled ‘The Protection of Sovereignty Bill,’ was adopted late on Tuesday and now awaits the signature of President Yoweri Museveni. Museveni, who has been in power since 1986, and allies in the ruling party regularly decry outside influence in Uganda, accusing domestic political rivals of receiving funding from abroad and pushing foreign agendas such as LGBTQ rights. Several Ugandan opposition parties have traditionally received some of their funding from outside the country.” (05/06/26)
- MI: Democrats keep state Senate majority with special election win
Source: The Hill
“Democrat Chedrick Greene is projected to win the special state Senate race in Michigan, according to Decision Desk HQ, preserving his party’s narrow majority in the chamber. With Greene’s projected victory in the 35th District, Democrats’ advantage expands from 19-18 to 20-18, easing their path to advance legislation. Democrats won a governing trifecta in 2022, taking control of the governorship and both chambers of the state legislature. But the party lost the state House in 2024 and has held a one-seat majority in the Senate since.” (05/05/26)
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5863628-michigan-senate-democrats-win-election/
- Spain: Regime agrees to let hantavirus-hit cruise ship dock in Canary Islands
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“Spain has granted permission for a luxury cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak and anchored off the coast of Cape Verde to sail to the Canary Islands. Spain’s Ministry of Health said in a statement late on Tuesday that the World Health Organization (WHO) had explained that Cape Verde in West Africa was unable to receive the 147 crew and passengers of the MV Hondius. ‘The Canary Islands are the closest location with the necessary capabilities,’ it said. ‘Spain has a moral and legal obligation to assist these people, among whom are also several Spanish citizens.’ … A Dutch couple and a German national have died of the rare disease, which is usually spread from infected rodents through urine, droppings and saliva, on board the ship in early April. A British national, who was evacuated from the ship, is in intensive care in South Africa, officials said.” (05/06/26)
- TACO Tuesday: Trump orders pause to “Project Freedom”
Source: The Guardian [UK]
“Donald Trump announced he is pausing ‘Project Freedom,’ the US effort to guide stranded vessels out of the strait of Hormuz, so he can finalise a deal with Iran, but added that his blockade of Iranian ports would remain in place. Trump’s abrupt change of plan was declared in a social media post, saying he was pausing the effort for ‘a short period’ to give space for US efforts to finalise a settlement with Iran to end the war. … Iran’s parliament speaker and chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, signalled Iran has yet to fully respond to the US attempt to reopen the waterway. … Hapag-Lloyd AG, one of the world’s largest container shipping companies, said in a statement that its risk assessment ‘remains unchanged’ and that transits through the strait ‘are for the moment not possible for our ships.'” (05/06/26)
- Ukraine: At least 27 dead in Russian strikes
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“Russian drone and missile attacks have killed at least 27 people in Ukraine, officials said, days before a two-day unilateral ceasefire by Moscow was due to take effect. Ukrainian officials said Russian glide bombs killed at least 12 people in southeastern Zaporizhzhia on Tuesday, hitting a car repair shop and residential buildings …. Further northeast, six people were killed, and 12 others were wounded in the city of Kramatorsk, the last hub under Ukraine’s control in the embattled Donetsk region. Four more people were killed in the city of Dnipro. Russian strikes also hit Ukrainian state-run gas facilities in the Poltava and Kharkiv regions overnight, killing three employees and two rescue workers, according to Serhiy Koretskyi, the CEO of Naftogaz.” (05/06/26)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/5/5/russian-attack-kills-five-at-ukraines-naftogaz-gas-facility
- IN: GOP primary challengers beat state senators who blocked Trump’s re-gerrymander demands
Source: WFYI News [US state media]
“Indiana Senate Republicans who opposed congressional redistricting were largely defeated during Tuesday’s primary election, with only one race so far called for an incumbent after President Donald Trump’s call to oust them. The results come after months of political threats, and an estimated $9 million in spending to back primary challengers against the incumbents. … In November, Trump vowed that any Republican who voted against redrawing the state’s congressional boundaries, ‘potentially having an impact on America itself, should be PRIMARIED.’ In spite of Trump’s threats, Indiana Senate Republicans rebuffed him, siding with Senate Democrats to kill the redistricting bill 31-19.” (05/05/26)
- Romania: Pro-European coalition collapses after prime minister fails no-confidence vote
Source: SFGate
“Romania’s pro-European coalition collapsed Tuesday after lawmakers voted against Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan, less than a year after he was sworn in, triggering fresh turmoil in the European country. The no-confidence vote was a blow to Bolojan, who came to power with the aim of ending one of Romania’s worst political crises in its post-communist history. The leftist Social Democratic Party, or PSD, and the hard-right opposition Alliance for the Unity of Romanians party, or AUR, jointly submitted the motion to Parliament on April 28. PSD withdrew from the coalition last month. On Tuesday, 281 lawmakers voted in favor and four voted against. Lawmakers from Bolojan’s center-right National Liberal Party, or PNL, and coalition partners, Save Romania Union party and the small ethnic Hungarian UDMR party, abstained.” (05/05/26)
- FL: Secret Service officer arrested for dramatizing job description in inappropriate place
Source: NBC News
“An off-duty Secret Service officer was arrested in Miami-Dade County, Florida, at around midnight Monday and charged with indecent exposure after allegedly masturbating in a hotel hallway, according to a police affidavit. The officer, identified in the arrest record as John Spillman, 33, was placed on administrative leave, Richard Macauley, the chief of the Secret Service’s uniformed division, said in a statement obtained by NBC station WTVJ. … According to the arrest affidavit, law enforcement officers responded to the DoubleTree by Hilton Miami Airport and Convention Center and allegedly found Spillman naked and masturbating at the end of a hallway. A guest on the same floor told the officers that the suspect had followed her from the hotel lobby ‘and they immediately entered their room because she was in fear for their lives,’ the affidavit said. Hotel security also alleged they saw the suspect masturbating, it said.” (05/05/26)
- Is Libertarianism Incoherent?
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by David Gordon & Roger E. Bissell“Libertarianism has no ‘fixed philosophical essence,’ [Matt] Zwolinski says, or you wouldn’t have seen the drastic swings in how the term was applied between Déjacque’s anarcho-communism of the 1850s and Leonard Read’s free markets and limited government of the 1950s, let alone the present-day. There simply has never been a permanent, stable paradigm of liberty. Yes, an apparent consensus was arrived at in the 1970s in the ‘rights-based free-market’ views of Robert Nozick, Ayn Rand, and Murray Rothbard — which Zwolinski also tellingly labels as rationalist and absolutist. (Code-word alert: he means unempirical and dogmatic, which are bad things, unlike the empirical and flexible approach he favors.) But this was more of a historical accident, or perhaps a breathing spell, before society in general and libertarian theory in particular began a steady unraveling and loss of cohesion.” (05/05/26)
- Addressing US Government Fraud Issues
Source: Independent Institute
by Craig Eyermann“No matter how you slice it, the U.S. government has a major fraud problem. The federal government’s watchdog agency, the General Accounting Office (GAO), estimates that about half a trillion dollars will be lost to fraud this year. Let’s put that number a little differently. In February 2026, just three months ago, the Congressional Budget Office projected the U.S. government would spend a net total of $7.448 trillion this year. Half a trillion dollars is about 1 out of every 15 dollars the federal government will spend in 2026. The GAO says Washington, D.C.’s politicians and bureaucrats might as well just flush that money down a bottomless sewer. Why not? If they did, they would have just as much to show for it.” (05/05/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/05/05/steps-solve-massive-problems-fraud/
- Stop waiting for Trump’s own words to take him down
Source: Los Angeles Times
by Jonah Goldberg“Trump’s famous claim that he could ‘shoot somebody’ on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters, may have been hyperbole. But it’s not crazy to think he wouldn’t lose as many voters as he should. In the film [A Face in the Crowd, Lonesome Rhodes implodes when Americans encounter his off-air persona. The key to Trump’s success is that he ran as his off-air persona. Why people love that persona is a complicated question. Among the many complementary explanations is that he comes across as authentic, and some people value authenticity more than they value good character, honesty or competence. This is not just a problem for Republicans.” (05/05/26)
- Constitutional Amendments to Stop America’s Authoritarian Turn Are Doable and Necessary
Source: The UnPopulist
by Andy Craig“In the United States, constitutional amendments are notoriously difficult to adopt. They require two-thirds in both houses of Congress, and then ratification by three-quarters of the states. The process was last used successfully more than 50 years ago. That’s why formal amendments are often dismissed as unrealistic. … There are several worthwhile amendments which could plausibly secure broad consensus if shorn of overtly partisan goals. We also should not fall into a failure of imagination that assumes the current party system and political divisions will be entrenched in perpetuity.” (05/05/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/constitutional-amendments-to-stop
- The quiet push to control AI speech
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by John Coleman“Recent reports suggest the Trump administration is now considering new oversight for advanced AI models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. Few details have been finalized, but officials are reportedly discussing an executive order to create a government–industry working group. Another idea under consideration is a process for reviewing models before or around their release. As these talks move forward, they risk setting a troubling precedent for free expression.” (05/05/26)
- Congress Gave Away Its Authority To Declare War and Enabled Trump’s Iran War
Source: Reason
by Fiona Harrigan“Congress hasn’t voted to declare war since 1942, yet the legislative branch constantly refuses to rein in presidents.” (05/05/26)
https://reason.com/2026/05/05/congress-and-the-executive-enabled-illegal-war-in-iran/
- US Debt Crosses 100% of GDP for First Time Since 1946 — And This Time Is Different
Source: The Daily Economy
by Romina Boccia“US public debt has reached 100 percent of GDP (gross domestic product) for the first time since the aftermath of World War II. Just because we have been here before, and we managed, doesn’t mean we will do so again. This time is different in important ways that are underappreciated by both policymakers and the public. In 1946, the United States emerged from a global war with high debt, but also with a young population, strong growth prospects, and a political commitment to fiscal restraint. Today, America faces the opposite: an aging population, structurally rising entitlement spending, and persistent deficits with no credible plan to rein them in.” (05/05/26)
- AI Regulation: More of the Risk, Less of the Benefit
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp“‘Whatever can happen,’ Augustes De Morgan wrote in 1866, ‘will happen if we make trials enough.’ To which I must add, if ‘we’ don’t make trials enough, someone else will. AI will inevitably be pushed to whatever, if any, limit it has. If American researchers can’t legally do it, Chinese researchers will do it. If Chinese researchers can’t legally do it, Swiss researchers will do it. If every government on the planet imposes pesky regulations on doing it, people who don’t care about pesky government regulations will do it. … Those of us who are allowed to avail ourselves of the most advanced AI possible will disproportionately reap whatever rewards it produces. Those of us for whom maximal AI is forbidden fruit will be more vulnerable to AI’s dark sides.” (05/05/26)
- Against a New Cold War
Source: Liberal Currents
by Craig Johnson“Contrary to what your high school textbook and film franchises like ‘Rambo’ and ‘Red Dawn’ taught you, the Cold War was not primarily a conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. That’s what the US teaches because it frames the war as something the US won — the Soviets are gone, after all — and because it relegates most of the actual violence of the war to the status of sideshow or backdrop to the “real” story of the war, the superpower rivalry. This version of the Cold War is real and lethal, but limited to proxy wars conducted in places white people don’t live, with the occasional spy thriller thrown in to mix things up. … Rather than a hypothetical conflict that occasionally got heated, The Cold War was a series of extremely violent and very real wars in which millions of people all over the world died.” (05/05/26)
- Trump’s Crusade Against the Holy See
Source: Exiled Policy
by Nick Gambill“Leo XIV, in the role of Pontiff, does not act as a political figure. The Pope has no elections to run. His job is to safeguard doctrine, maintain the unity of the Church, and serve as a spiritual authority. This makes the President’s attack against the Pope unusually preposterous.” (05/05/26)
https://exiledpolicy.substack.com/p/trumps-crusade-against-the-holy-see
- California voters fed up with Democrats may turn to Steve Hilton for change
Source: Fox News Forum
by Liz Peek“In 2016, then-presidential candidate Trump famously asked Black voters ‘What do you have to lose?’ Trump challenged African American voters to rethink their long-standing allegiance to the Democrat Party, which, he rightly claimed, took them for granted and had failed to deliver on the most pressing demands of African American families, including providing their kids with a good education. Steve Hilton, a Republican and former Fox News host, running to become governor of deep blue California, should be posing that same question to Golden State voters. California is one of the most expensive places to live in the country, entirely because of decisions made by Democrats who have controlled the state with a two-thirds supermajority in the legislature since 2018 and also occupied the governor’s mansion since 2011.” [editor’s note: It was one of the most expensive states to live in LONG before 2011 – TLK] (05/05/26)
- Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 05/05/26
Source: Antiwar.com
“Trump Says ‘Project Freedom’ Is Now Paused, US Bombs Somalia for 62nd Time This Year, and More.” (05/05/26)
- Nonzero, 05/05/26
Source: bloggingheads.tv
“Trump Lost the Hormuz Round | Robert Wright & Nikita Petrov.” (05/05/26)
- Year Zero with Tommy Salmons, 05/05/26
Source: Libertarian Institute
“TEXIT w/Daniel Miller.” (05/05/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/blog/texit-w-daniel-miller/
- Trump Watch, 05/05/26
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
“Trump’s Iranian Tar Baby.” (05/05/26)